By Tarice L.S. Gray

The mind of Beverly McIver, bursting with creativity and insight, has propelled her to wide acclaim as an artist. The contrast with her older sister Renee, forever burdened by mental disability with the mind of a nine-year-old, could not be starker.

But Beverly and Renee remain tied to each other by familial bonds and, on Beverly’s part, by an appreciation of what her sister, whose mind did not win Fortune’s favor, contributed to her own success.

That bond is explored in an HBO documentary, “Raising Renee,” which airs tonight.

Although it’s concerned with several other aspects of Beverly McIver’s life, it does offer a compelling portrait of the difficulties and pleasures that characterize between siblings when one of them is mentally disabled.

When Beverly McIver was finding her voice as a painter, she thought often of Renee and the simplicity of her life, which was spent mostly making pot-holders. Renee was a constant presence in McIver’s life, and so the artist in her shared what she knew with the world.

“It was my first serious body of work out of graduate school, my sister Renee,” McIver said of those early paintings. But soon she discovered that as she thought more deeply about their relationship, she became enraged.  “And I started obliterating her [portrait] … I was just horrified.”

It seemed the seeds of awareness of what being the sister of Renee meant were blooming in a most unsettling way. That’s because Renee’s lifelong condition had more than just affected Beverly. Sometimes it seemed that it had overwhelmed her life. McIver remembered that the tenor of their childhood was dictated by Renee, who struggled with her disabling physical and mental state.  “When we were growing up, everything centered around [Renee],” McIver recalls. “If Renee is having a bad day, everybody’s having a bad day. If Renee didn’t want to go outside and play, we couldn’t, (Beverly and Renee have another sister, Roni, who helps take care of Renee.) because we couldn’t leave her in the house by herself.” McIver called her sister a “bigger than life creature” who had invaded her past as youth, present as an artist, and, she felt, threatened her promising future.

To characterize Renee, as “bigger than life” is most certainly telling of the relationship between the sisters. Being disabled, quiet Renee’s public persona doesn’t loom large in the documentary. It’s part of what drew filmmakers Jeanne Jordan and Steve Ascher to the project. Ascher said, “Renee is somebody who, if you’re in a large group sometimes may recede into the distance.” But amongst family Renee’s needs and demands were intensified by a demanding personality that at times turned violent. In the film McIver almost seems to be attempting to convince the storytellers that the sweet, mild mannered Renee had earlier been a much different human being. The images that made her rediscover her rage while painting Renee’s portrait, the memories that haunted her childhood recollections, surfaced again when she faced with the prospect of raising Renee.

That had primarily been the duty of their mother Ethel, a single parent who had worked as a domestic to afford raising her three daughters in a low-income housing development in Greensboro, North Carolina. When Ethel fell ill with terminal cancer, she looked to Beverly to care for Renee. At the time, the film reveals, distance as well as a decade, had put enough space between the sisters for Beverly to underestimate “the ramifications of what that meant for me as a single person, as an artist.”

But with their mother’s passing, Beverly and Renee took to each other, and discovered new roles. They were not just sisters, but nurturers to one another. Renee came to depend on her sister for meals, laying out her clothes, and the occasional conversation. Reluctantly at first, Beverly grew accustomed to her sister in her space – because Renee was a constant reminder, McIver confessed, that she is loved. It’s expressed in the poster art for the film Raising Renee which shows Beverly and Renee in a sisterly embrace.  “She’s the only one on this earth that adores me. Just this unconditional love, she really thinks I’m the cat’s meow.” It’s something Beverly cherishe

Reality now for the McIver sisters remains art-inspiring as Beverly continues to paint her life. Renee is living the unthinkable: She has her own apartment in an independent-living complex in Durham, North Carolina, a few short miles from her beloved sister Beverly. Renee remains surrounded by friends and family, and Beverly smiles at the thought that both sisters have evolved. They’ve become more than what they thought they could be, both to each other, and within the world. It’s a testament McIver believes that, “anything is possible.”

Raising Renee premieres on HBO Feb. 22nd.

Tarice L.S. Gray is a freelance writer and blogger for GrayCurrent.com